McGhee, John (2015) New lands; old ways John Galt's North American Corpus. MPhil(R) thesis. https://theses.gla.ac.uk/6287/ Copyright and moral rights for this work are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This work cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Enlighten: Theses https://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] New Lands; Old Ways John Galt’s North American Corpus A Dissertation submitted to the University of Glasgow for the degree of MPhil by John McGhee September 2014 1 Contents Chapter 1 Introduction p 3 Chapter 2 Historical Context: ‘What other men gather into barns’ p 7 Chapter 3 Periodical Contributions: ‘A very troublesome fellow’ p 22 Chapter 4 Lawrie Todd: ‘The architect of my own elevation’ p 65 Chapter 5 Bogle Corbet: ‘Teaching in parables’ p 94 Chapter 6 Conclusion: ‘Formed to lead and ever fond of leading’ p 127 Bibliography p 134 Acknowledgements p 139 Front Cover: Bust of John Galt in Market Square, Guelph, Ontario 2 Chapter 1 Introduction John Galt (1779 – 1839) first went from Britain to North America in February 1825 and returned in June of that year. He made a much longer visit from October 1826 to May 1829 and that period can be considered as the fulcrum of his life. Up to that point, notwithstanding some setbacks, his career was on a generally upward trend. He was a successful and acclaimed author, a respected man of affairs and his business concerns seemed to be on the brink of earning him both material and reputational reward. By May 1829 the curve had definitely turned downward and although he would still publish good and successful literary work it was in the context of managing debt, debility and decline. The glad confident morning of 1826 had become by 1829 a chill dark night. Galt’s involvement with North America led to him producing two novels with settings in that continent and, for periodicals, at least twenty-six articles on North American themes. The novels, Lawrie Todd1 and Bogle Corbet2, have received some critical attention but far less than has been devoted to Galt’s better known ‘theoretical histories’ set in the west of Scotland.3 In the past century there have been two book-length studies of Galt’s literary life, by Jennie Aberdein4 and Ian Gordon5. Aberdein devotes just over a page to Lawrie Todd and less to Bogle Corbet. Gordon, apart from passing references in relation to other topics, does the same and shows considerable disdain for both novels. Elizabeth Waterston published a truncated edition of Bogle Corbet, with a critical introduction, leaving out the first two-thirds of the text to highlight the Canadian scenes.6 To mark Galt’s bicentenary in 1979 1 John Galt, Lawrie Todd: or The Settlers in the Woods (London: Colburn & Bentley, 1830). 2 John Galt, Bogle Corbet: or The Emigrants (London: Colburn & Bentley, 1831). 3 The term theoretical or conjectural history was first coined by Dugald Stewart in his Account of Adam Smith in The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith: III. Essays on Philosophical Subjects, (Oxford: OUP, 1980) p293. 4 Jennie W Aberdein, John Galt (London: OUP, 1936). 5 Ian A Gordon, John Galt The Life of a Writer (Toronto: Toronto UP, 1972). 6 John Galt, Bogle Corbet: or The Emigrants, Elizabeth Waterston (ed.) (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1977). 3 Christopher Whatley edited a collection of essays but none of them made any reference to these two novels.7 Waterston also produced a collection of essays on Galt8, arising from a conference at the University of Guelph. Given that location, it is not surprising that there is a heavy concentration on Bogle Corbet with contributions from Erik Frykman, Martin Bowman, Ian Campbell and Waterston herself. An essay by Gilbert Stelter focuses on Galt’s contribution to the establishment of towns and how that led to Canadian towns differing from those in the United States. Frykman gives both novels the faintest of praise and finds them deficient in relation to the Scottish texts. Like many critics, including Ian Gordon, he believes the early works to be the apogee of Galt’s literary achievements. Waterston argues that the episodic structure of Bogle Corbet provides a template for subsequent Canadian literature from Galt’s time to the stories of Alice Munro. She asserts that there is nothing ‘in lieu of a romance plot’9 yet Bowman entitles his essay ‘Bogle Corbet and the Sentimental Romance’10 and contends that it is in this text, rather than the west of Scotland novels, that Galt solves ‘the problems of characterisation and melodramatic plot which…he inherited from the practitioners of sentimental romance’.11 Neither is wholly right. Galt has adopted the common tropes of romances but that is not his main purpose. He has sought to find a suitable package for his chief aim which is to educate his readers about community building in the wilderness. Ian Campbell favourably compares the characterisation of Corbet with Provost Pawkie in The Provost12 and the Reverend Balwhidder in The Annals of the Parish13 and notes that both the North American novels are ‘about the frustrations and shortcomings of the 7 John Galt 1779-1979, Christopher A. Whatley (ed.) (Edinburgh: Ramsay Head Press, 1979). 8 John Galt Reappraisals, Elizabeth Waterson (ed.) (Guelph: Guelph UP, 1985). 9 Ibid., p61. 10 Ibid., p63. 11 Ibid., p70. 12 John Galt, The Provost (Oxford: OUP, 1982). 13 John Galt, The Annals of the Parish (Edinburgh: Mercat Press, 1980). 4 colonisation experience fully as much as about the challenge and satisfaction’.14 In this one volume we can therefore see the range of opinion which Lawrie Todd and Bogle Corbet provoke. Paul Scott wrote a slim volume on Galt in which he comments briefly on both the North American novels and notes their international appeal and influence.15 In his doctoral thesis of 1992, Nicholas Whistler writes on John Galt and the New World.16 This is a work of considerable scholarship and is particularly strong on Galt’s bibliography and correspondence. Whistler’s aim is to trace the influences of the United States on Galt and how Galt then influenced American authors. He is also keen to rebut Ian Gordon’s assertion that Galt kept his business and literary lives separate. There is therefore a good deal of biography among the criticism which means that he only gives a substantial analysis to Lawrie Todd. Bogle Corbet is somewhat cursorily mentioned. Whistler makes a number of references to Galt’s contributions to periodical publications but since his principal concern is to tease out connections to the United States he does little in the way of detailed analysis of these texts, except for the short story ‘The New Atlantis’.17 Most recently, there is a considered analysis of Bogle Corbet in relation to transatlantic trade by Kenneth McNeil in the essay collection edited by Regina Hewitt.18 Victoria Woolner’s doctoral thesis gives extensive consideration to both novels from the perspective of their influence on subsequent Canadian literature.19 She also comments on some of Galt’s related journalism. Jenni Calder, in a study of Scots pioneers in North America, summarises both novels without subjecting them to detailed analysis. She does 14 Ibid., p116. 15 Paul Scott, John Galt (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1985). 16 Nicholas Whistler, John Galt and the New World, Cambridge University PhD thesis, 1992. 17 Ibid., p245. 18 Kenneth McNeil, Time, Emigration, and the Circum-Atlantic World: John Galt’s Bogle Corbet in John Galt Observations and conjectures on Literature, History, and Society, Regina Hewitt (ed.) (Lewisburg: Bucknell UP, 2012). 19 Victoria Woolner, Scottish Romanticism and its impact on early Canadian Literature, PhD thesis, University of Glasgow, 2013. 5 however class Galt with people like Lord Selkirk and other colonisers as ‘men of unrealistic vision’.20 These critical works are considered where appropriate in subsequent chapters dealing with specific texts. There is, therefore, a rather small corpus of criticism in comparison to the time and thought which has been devoted to Galt’s more popular novels and there has been no systematic study of his journalism related to North America. Yet that period of Galt’s life was hugely important to him and the literary works which sprang from it reveal much about the man’s character and beliefs. This dissertation attempts to fill that gap by examining both novels in some depth and, for the first time, analysing the journalism related toGalt’s North American experience both before and after his work in Canada. In order to place these literary works in context it will set out, in Chapter 2, how Galt became involved with North America, what he did there and how it came to an end. It shows that he tried to implement, to the eventual benefit of others rather than himself, his long-held beliefs about emigration and colonisation. Chapter 3 examines the journalism he produced both before and after his sojourn in Canada and how it demonstrates his consistency of purpose, his urge to teach lessons to both Governments and prospective settlers and the effect of his exposure to Enlightenment thought.